


Caesura

by StairwellWit



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: M/M, One Shot, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 05:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StairwellWit/pseuds/StairwellWit
Summary: Years later Goodnight couldn't say he loved him because it wasn't true enough. Strong enough. He knew how to say it in three languages and even swept together in a heap they didn't make an emotion large enough to show how Goody felt.





	Caesura

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two so much.   
> comments always welcome, i love talking to everyone!  
> as always much love!   
> -S

"Je ne peux pas vivre sans toi."  
"You are speaking nonsense again"  
Billy's sigh is deadpan against Goodnight's lips as he drops his head back allowing his face to come into focus. "What are you mumbling now?"  
Even in the black of their little room above the tavern Goody's gold tooth flashes, his grin a sharp crescent cut out of the darkness. "It's French, cher, not nonsense."   
"If you are speaking it, it is nonsense"  
Goodnight's amusement comes in the form of a soft puff against Billy's cheekbone.   
"Have I ever told you what a vision you are?"  
Billy doesn't bother offering up the fact that the room hardly has the lighting to justify his appearance, just shifts to collect their cigarette case. "Yes, Goody. On more than one occasion." The match flares and Goodnight manages to look only half depressed over his dismissal.   
"You do have a way of making a compliment seem so inane, chér" Billy hums, trying to ignore the smile tugging at the edges of his lips instead letting the perfumed smoke veil up between them.   
Goody always starts here, like this. Fingering scars like hieroglyphs, touching Billy's hair like old paper that will crumble in his callouses. Goody is all soft coaxing and pleading whispers. He has no bite left in him, even less bark. Just frayed edges and too many words.   
Gods, always too many words. Soft sentences strung like polished pearls on broken chords. Goodnight kisses open mouth, because heaven forbid he miss a chance to talk.   
He slips prayers and praises like aces down sleeves from tongues into cheeks. Billy once told Goody he was the only man he'd met on two Continents that could talk over himself and Goodnight supposes it's probably true.  
Goodnight was, by nature, a soft spoken man. He had come into this world with a gasp and sigh. His mother had said he had the softest cries of any infant she'd seen. Regretful she'd called his sobs, mournful. Willing to suffer on his own even as an infant, as if he'd long lost something he had no mind to be aware of yet.   
In his later years his voice was graced with a comforting lilt and a creole edge that made people lean in to listen. He had raised his voice very few times in his life and when he had it came out forced, more of a wail than a yell. Punched out of his chest in such a way it sounded despondent.   
In this same nature, sewn into his core not by nurture but his very blood, he was neither a violent man. It was not the history he had ever wished to carve out for himself. Everything that Goodnight Robicheaux had become to the world was everything, that by creation, Goodnight Robicheaux was not.  
Even after the war, words had always come so easily to Goodnight. He spoke first to cover the pounding of guns in his head, then to distract from his tremors and cold sweat when the taverns got to rowdy. Whether the distraction was for him or others he could never quite say for sure. This was his life, white knuckled sanity on a tilted stage, until Billy.   
Billy who all but glanced at the house of cards Goodnight had tried to piece over his ailing mind and folded it with less than a breath of greeting. Billy, who had thoroughly dispatched a whole room of men, then appeared to Goody, a feufollet in his haze to lead him. The first thing Billy told Goodnight was he had earthquakes in his hands. The first thing Goodnight said back was please don't leave.  
He never did. The lean whip of a man quietly fell into place and held him up in more ways than one.   
Years later Goodnight couldn't say he loved him because it wasn't true enough. Strong enough. He knew how to say it in three languages and even swept together in a heap they didn't make an emotion large enough to show how Goody felt.   
Because when Billy's lean hips piece into Goody's even leaner sanity he could cry.  
Because how could words describe this. When Billy moves in him like the holy spirit.  
How could he ever possibly say this.  
'This' is always where proper thoughts escape him, all smoothness gone, from bullet to buckshot, Goodnight will ramble on. Hoping he hits somewhere close to home. Complimenting Billy is like shooting and missing the broad side of a barn. Even on days he is convinced no living language exists to tell Billy what he sees when he looks at him, Goody surely tries his damndest. He searches Billy's skin like the words will bloom in the bruises he sucks into his neck. Aims at catching every soft sigh Billy gives off like a new language is being born in each one. He tries to speak the flavor Billy leaves on the brail of his tastebuds. But his words aren't quite as eloquent tinted brassy by Billy's belt buckle. He says them anyway. Sometimes if only to hear them bounce back. Let him know that he's still with him. That he hasn't faded into an extended cruel lie of his mind creation, still stuck in Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, North Anna.   
Billy found long ago when one word escapes Goodnight he fills the space with three. And Goodnight asks how could he not when it comes to Billy.  
Billy who is every poem Goodnight will never hear. He's every sonnet he will never see. He is soft worn pages he will never get to dog ear in leather bound books he will never hold.  
He's the cumulative of every rhyme and line, and he wishes he could speak the way that Billy looks.  
But words can never do him well enough. When they made language people like Billy weren't kept in mind.   
Every pause he takes to lick his lips. Ever caesura between heart beats;   
is Billy.   
Below Goody the quirly finds its way under his nose, Billy waiting patiently for him to take his turn.   
"Non, mon cher. Mettez-le sur la table..."  
Goodnight shook his head no, taking the offered cigarette from Billy's hand and snubbing it gently on the night stand. Some days, even sweet as it smelled, the opium laced in it floral and warm, Goody still can't handle smoke in his eyes. Not with clotted memories of trenches and canons dancing in his mind.   
He brushes the clouds from blocking his view of Billy's face and presses their foreheads together. This close he can feel Billy's breath soft and humid against his lips. The younger man is used to this, these sudden twists of emotion from Goodnight, the sudden aches and painful coils that would build up beneath his chest with no warn or whim and leave him curling into himself.   
Calloused thumbs sweetly kiss his temples, soothing panic that made honeyed things turn sour.   
"Je ne peux pas vivre sans toi.."  
"Nonsense"  
"It's-"  
"I know it is french, Goody. And it's nonsense, you would live just fine without me"   
Goody grunts harshly. "You know rightly that's not true, Billy-" "You did just fine before-" "Just fine is a monstrous exaggeration"  
"Goody"  
"Billy."   
The latter lets out a long suffering sigh. "Goodnight, I am not going anywhere" Goody is crumbling softly in his hands, dropping crumbs of worry and creole mumblings in the hollows of his left collarbone. "Goodnight. Goodnight." Billy pulls harder than he likes to against Goody's ears to lift his head "I am not going anywhere willingly. Stop this, yes?"  
"Billy..." The way Goody says his name is a chipped porcelain cup.  
He pictures it as the same one his mother drank from when he was a child.  
Poor blue eyes lift up to him, pockets of exhaustion stored under them in dark circles he only sometimes notices more than others. There are days where the blue in his eyes turn bright, the color shifted, saturated like desert noons. Days when fear had forgets Goodnight Robicheaux. Panic and memories take strolls off to places Billy wishes they would not return from. Nightmares break like a high fever. But Billy knows this was not a sickness that cures, these ghosts will follow him through life. His poor broken man. This ridiculous, incessant, quick tongued man. These blue devils are never far from nipping on his heels. Billy wishes at the least they had the respect to not nip their bedside.   
Billy shifts them, his pants scuffing against Goody's half bare legs, until they stretch side by side. Goodnight had complained more than once for Billy's penchant for sleeping almost wholly clothed, grousing on how it chafed his legs where his drawers ended. Such an odd couple. Billy would have laughed to himself if it was funny in this moment, sometimes it was anything but. Their awkward balancing act.   
Goodnight's eyes close, sweat prickling his temples, and Billy wonders where he goes. He knows the shape of his memories. But it is like looking at a waterlogged painting. He knew he had killed many people in the war. Children, Goody always called them. Children as if he hadn't been one himself.   
Hatred was a great, silent, man made storm over their world. And such damndable misery did its quiet winds stir.  
Billy's knuckle brushes unruly hair from Goody's face. The true misery in the world was that this was supposed to be wrong. Love; the need to connect to everyone and everything, was not a lesson but an ingrained emotion. The automatic indifference to color and faces. Hate was created when at some point people realized they had nothing left to teach each other, when everything important came naturally. It was a war against instinct that humanity had begun waging centuries ago.  
Birds did not feel useless when their children knew to fly, or build a nest, they did not care with whom the nest was built.  
Billy has seen war, has seen death, created it. Billy has hated. Hated so much he thought it would be the only thing he may ever feel again. Billy does not think that Goodnight has ever truly hated anyone in the world other than himself. This too was taught.  
Against his chest Goody is slipping away, dozing into a somewhat peaceful haze.   
Outside a coyote is howling, the wind is blowing, and Billy thinks, 'I do not want to survive without you..'


End file.
